Nuclear Power’s Reboot

Summary

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WSJ What’s News: “Nuclear Power’s Reboot”

Date: May 10, 2026
Host: Katherine Sullivan
Podcast Series: USA 250 (Episode Four)

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Overview

This special Sunday episode of WSJ’s What’s News explores the resurgence of nuclear power in the United States—what many are calling a “nuclear renaissance.” Through historical context, expert interviews, and recent developments, host Katherine Sullivan traces nuclear’s troubled legacy, the sharp turn in public and corporate opinion, and how demands from AI and tech giants are radically altering the energy landscape. The episode examines whether this new wave of nuclear optimism will stick or fade, as it has before.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introduction – From Pageants to Power Plants

• Miss America 2023’s Unusual Platform
  Grace Vanderhei, a nuclear engineer and Miss Wisconsin, won Miss America on a platform of nuclear energy advocacy, symbolizing nuclear’s growing presence in public discourse (00:17–01:50).
  • Quote:
    “As a nuclear engineer, I’m here to tell you the time to change is now. Nuclear energy is a safe, effective and zero-carbon method of producing power. Let’s embrace clean energy for a cleaner future.” – Grace Vanderhei (Miss Wisconsin) [00:54]

2. The Nuclear Renaissance: Venture Dollars & Big Tech

• Venture Capital & Tech Demand Surge
  Last year, 45 new nuclear energy deals totaling $5.25 billion—over 7x as many as in 2018 ([01:55]).
  Tech giants (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon) are investing in nuclear to power AI data centers ([02:00–02:44]).
  • Quote:
    “The most important thing is to win the AI race. We have to have the most infrastructure, we need to have the most data centers, we need to have the most computing power and that means more energy.” – Tech Industry Commentator [02:44]

3. Nuclear’s Historical Legacy: War, Peace, and “Too Cheap to Meter”

• Origin and Early Hopes
  The Manhattan Project’s legacy, the atomic bomb’s shadow, and the US push to rebrand atomic energy for peace (Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech) ([03:03–06:00]).
• Early Optimism
  Government campaigns and Disney’s educational shorts promoted nuclear as glamorous and boundlessly cheap ([06:10–07:32]).
  • Quote:
    “The phrase that was repeated over and over again is that it will be too cheap to meter.” – Historian Sarah Roby [07:11]
• Short-Lived Boom
  The first commercial plant at Shippingport, PA opened in 1957, but only 112 reactors ever operated at peak—well short of officials’ vision for 1,000 by 2000 ([09:17–09:37]).

4. Disillusionment & Backlash: Accidents and Loss of Trust

• Safety Oversights
  A culture dismissing the risk of serious accidents led to lax safety enforcement ([09:49–10:37]).
  • Quote:
    “You could not raise the possibility of a serious accident. Serious accident was deemed to be essentially not credible.” – Victor Galinsky (nuclear physicist) [10:15]
• The Three Mile Island Meltdown ([12:00–17:27])
  • Personal Account: Paula Kinney recalls confusion, panic, and loss of trust after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Pennsylvania plant ([14:07–17:16]).
  • Public Impact: The accident galvanized the anti-nuclear movement, with major rallies and protests nationwide.
    • Quote:
      “I lost so much trust in our government. I mean, it was like I couldn’t believe they did this to us.” – Paula Kinney [17:16]
• Chernobyl’s Fallout
  The 1986 disaster in the Soviet Union further decimated US public support—by mid-1986, over 70% of Americans opposed new plants ([18:50]).

5. The Long Lull

• Regulatory Crackdown & Industry Freeze
  Sweeping new safety rules were enacted, but no new US plants launched for 25 years; some were even retired ([19:28]).

6. The AI Catalyst: New Energy, New Enthusiasm

• AI & Data Centers Trigger Surging Demand
  The late 2022 debut of ChatGPT and other AI advances led tech companies to seek gigawatts of energy—resurrecting interest in nuclear ([20:32–21:04]).
  • Quote:
    “A gigawatt is about what a reactor produces. So to have one facility that takes an entire reactor’s worth of power is just something that we hadn’t seen before.” – Jennifer Hiller (WSJ energy reporter) [21:04]
• Corporate Partnerships
  Constellation and Microsoft entered a 20-year deal to restart the remaining Three Mile Island reactor. Other tech firms inked nuclear deals, leading to previously unthinkable plant “restarts” [22:33–23:35].
  • Quote:
    “This is new in the U.S... If you closed a nuclear reactor down, if you’re decommissioning a nuclear power plant, that’s just it, kind of end of story. That plant goes away.” – Jennifer Hiller [23:46]

7. Next-Gen Nuclear and Fusion: Innovation, Costs, Hype

• Advanced Reactors & Investment
  Companies like Bill Gates’ TerraPower are pursuing next-gen reactors, with individual projects costing $4–10 billion ([24:02]).
  • Quote:
    “I feel great about the support we’re getting from the federal government in this nuclear space to take our history of excellence and solve the problem that our current reactors are just way too expensive.” – Bill Gates [24:23]
• The Fusion Mirage
  Despite decades of false starts, tech moguls (Sam Altman, Bill Gates, the Trump family) are betting on nuclear fusion’s promise ([24:53–25:02]).
  • Quote:
    “I think we’re going to get nuclear fusion to work in the next few years—importantly, not just as a scientific demonstration, but as incredibly cheap energy and at global scale.” – Sam Altman [24:53]

8. The Political Push: Trump Administration’s Nuclear Goals

• Rollbacks & Acceleration
  President Trump’s administration is fast-tracking nuclear construction by rolling back regulations, aiming for multiple new reactors operational by July 4, 2026 ([25:47–26:20]).
  • Quote:
    “By the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, meaning July 4th of this year, we’re going to have multiple nuclear reactors critical. People thought that was crazy.” – Energy Secretary Chris Wright [26:02]

9. Uncertainties: Hype vs. Reality

• Skepticism Remains
  Not all experts are convinced the boom will materialize.
  • Quote:
    “There’s definitely a huge hype cycle going on, but we do not yet know who’s going to successfully deliver projects.” – Jennifer Hiller [26:33]
• Public Opinion’s Shift
  Public support is now at 61% (vs. 44% a decade ago), but history shows popular enthusiasm can quickly dissipate ([26:47]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Too Cheap to Meter.” (Sarah Roby, [07:11]) – The unrealized promise that once fired the early nuclear boom.
• “We were getting conflicting messages... If you live in a brick house, open your windows. If you live in a brick house, keep your windows shut... it was complete chaos.” – Paula Kinney on Three Mile Island panic ([15:07])
• “This time around, the big question—Will AI give nuclear staying power? Or like last time, will enthusiasm fizzle out?” – Katherine Sullivan [26:56]

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Timeline Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:17–01:50: Miss America’s nuclear energy platform and symbolic meaning
• 03:03–06:00: Nuclear’s wartime roots and 1950s optimism
• 09:49–10:37: Institutional safety failures pre-Three Mile Island
• 12:00–17:27: Three Mile Island meltdown—firsthand and societal impacts
• 20:32–24:02: AI-fueled revival (generative artificial intelligence driving new nuclear demand)
• 24:02–25:11: Next-generation reactors, fusion hype, and massive investments
• 25:47–26:20: Trump Administration’s regulatory and political push
• 26:47–end: Public opinion shifts and open questions for nuclear’s future

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Tone

The episode strikes a balanced, inquisitive tone—melding skepticism over past failures with cautious optimism about new technology and societal needs. History is invoked not just as a chronicle but as a caution for repeating mistakes.

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Conclusion

Nuclear Power’s Reboot offers a sweeping primer on America’s complex relationship with nuclear energy: initial triumphalism, disaster-induced disillusionment, and today’s tech-fueled optimism. With historical baggage and fresh pressures from the AI revolution, a new era is dawning—but whether this time nuclear delivers on its promises remains very much in flux.

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Transcript

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[Narrator/Commentator]

the

[Katherine Sullivan]

Miss America competition in 2023 included a lot of what you'd expect from the pageant stage. Sequins, smiles, stilettos. Thousands of candidates competed across the country this year at the local and and it has come down to these 51 candidates competing to be Miss America 2023 and of course, coordinated dance moves. But amongst all the fanfare, there was a hint about where our country's energy Future is headed. Ms. Wisconsin had something to say about it. As a nuclear engineer, I'm here to tell you the time to change is now. Nuclear energy is a safe place, effective and zero carbon method of producing power. Let's embrace clean energy for a cleaner future. I did not, first of all think I was going to win Ms. America, second of all, think a nuclear engineer would become Miss America. But it was such an awesome grace. Vanderhei, aka Ms. Wisconsin ran on a platform of expanding nuclear power and was crowned Miss America at a pivotal time for energy politics. It was such an awesome time because like that was right before AI and all of these energy conversations really started taking place and I sort of got to be on the forefront of energy conversations and energy education for Americans. Now, just a few years later, we're entering with the Trump administration is calling a nuclear renaissance. Last year, venture capitalists announced 45 new nuclear energy deals totaling five and a quarter billion dollars. According to PitchBook, that's over seven times as many deals as there were in 2018. Proponents of nuclear tout it as the carbon free solution to our energy future and the key to winning the AI race. Companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft are all investing in nuclear plants to satisfy their growing electricity needs. But for decades, nuclear power was a no go in the US and we

[Narrator/Commentator]

can make nuclear power obsolete because we have no choice.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Because if we don't make it obsolete, it will make us obsolete. Opinions have shifted dramatically. The race to dominate a new energy thirsty technology has tech leaders saying nuclear power is more necessary.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

The most important thing is to win the AI race. We have to have the most infrastructure, we need to have the most data centers, we need to have the most computing power and that means more energy.

[Katherine Sullivan]

We're even restarting a reactor on the site of the country's water worst nuclear accident.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

It was the first step in a nuclear nightmare.

[Katherine Sullivan]

How is this nuclear era going to be Different. Will the US Achieve its unrealized energy goals this time around? It's Sunday, May 10th. I'm Katherine Sullivan for the Wall street journal. This is USA250, a podcast series connecting America's economic present to its past. This is episode four, Nuclear Power's Reboot. On August 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman made an announcement that would change the history of war and of science.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

[Katherine Sullivan]

When we talk about the history of nuclear energy, it's impossible to disentangle it from nuclear weapons. In 1945, the US became the first and only country to drop nuclear bombs in war.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

With this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.

[Katherine Sullivan]

These two bombs killed over 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It unleashed a level of annihilation never before seen. The secretive Manhattan Project had developed the bomb. It also fast tracked our understanding of a new technology, nuclear fission, or the splitting apart of an atom's nucleus.

[Narrator/Commentator]

In the United States. It's that Manhattan Project that really is the genesis of all of the rest of what has come since.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Sarah Roby is an associate professor at Idaho State University, where she studies the history of nuclear science and technology. If nuclear technology was so powerful that it could destroy entire cities, could it also be harnessed to help power cities? And if so, could it change the way the world got its energy? In a facility in Idaho, scientists began testing different types of nuclear reactors. One of those reactors generated the first nuclear electricity.

[Narrator/Commentator]

There are some very famous images of a little string of light bulbs lit by atomic power in 1951.

[Katherine Sullivan]

This small production proved conclusively that nuclear reactions could generate electricity. The government needed to show people that this technology wasn't only useful in war, it could be used for peace and prosperity, too. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech at the United nations titled Atoms for Peace.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

The United States would be more than willing, it would be proud, to take up with others, principally involved the development of plans whereby such peaceful use of atomic energy would be expedited.

[Katherine Sullivan]

The US not only encouraged friendly countries to build nuclear power plants, but also helped share knowledge and, in some cases, nuclear fuel with them. And the Eisenhower administration was also undertaking a rebranding campaign. At home, you start seeing a lot

[Narrator/Commentator]

of film reels and pamphlets and public education materials that sort of say, yes, atomic weapons have been used for this very powerful war. Purpose. But let me tell you about the glorious nuclear future that awaits us.

[Katherine Sullivan]

It was even popularized in an educational film made by Disney.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

The atomic fire is an almost endless source of heat. We can use it in power stations for producing electricity, electric power of our modern civilization.

[Narrator/Commentator]

And so not only were they, you know, boosting or promoting nuclear power, but civilian nuclear transportation, so in trains and planes and cars even sometimes.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

And our last wish will come true. If we use the power of this knowledge in their spirit, then the atom will become truly our friend.

[Narrator/Commentator]

In terms of the messaging that the public was receiving about the benefits of nuclear power, the phrase that was repeated over and over again is that it will be too cheap to meter. That was the selling point, that phrase,

[Katherine Sullivan]

too cheap to meter. It helped drive enthusiasm for the technology. It was first said by a government official named Lewis Strauss. If you saw the movie Oppenheimer, you might be familiar with Strauss. He was played By Robert Downey Jr. Strauss was imagining a future where nuclear power was so abundant that it would be basically free, too cheap to be tracked by your electric meter. And in 1957, the first commercial nuclear power plant roared to life in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

[Narrator/Commentator]

This was the first commercial power plant that was hooked up to the civilian grid. And it was inaugurated, you could say, with a lot of fanfare. So Eisenhower actually attended, you know, the opening ceremony, so to speak, for the

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

shipping port reactor power stations exclusively devoted to peaceful purposes. It is with pride.

[Katherine Sullivan]

After that, an era of nuclear energy expansion unfolded. At the same time that fission reactors were popping up across the US the government was working on a new kind of nuclear science, nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is different from nuclear fission. Fusion requires heating atoms up to extremely high temperatures until they fuse together, releasing huge amounts of energy. It's the same process that powers the sun.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

When fusion takes place, a small amount of matter is converted into great energy. Can man imitate and control this fusing action of the sun and so create boundless power?

[Katherine Sullivan]

Many consider it the holy grail of energy that would generate nearly limitless amounts of power. It added to the excitement for nuclear science, even though we still haven't made it work. Meanwhile, back in the 1960s, the government was making big predictions for fission.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Officials were predicting that there would be 1,000 commercial power reactors in the United States by the year 2000. That never happened. But that's how optimistic they were that starting new projects and getting more and more reactors on board, that's how optimistic they were feeling about the nuclear future. In the 60s, at peak, there were

[Katherine Sullivan]

about 112 reactors operating in the US that's just over a tenth of the number officials hoped for. Today, there are 94. So what happened?

[Victor Galinsky]

There was a mentality that serious accidents could not happen in the nuclear power world.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Victor Galinsky is a nuclear physicist. He worked on nuclear policy under Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He first started working in government in 1971. His job was to review licenses for new reactors. He said there was a lot of pressure to approve reactors quickly.

[Victor Galinsky]

You could not raise the possibility of a serious accident. You couldn't say, you know, you should not grant this license because there are not adequate provisions to prevent a serious accident, because a serious accident was deemed to be essentially not credible.

[Katherine Sullivan]

A New York Times investigation in 1974 found that in just the previous year alone, the government found over 3,000 safety violations at nuclear power plants. But they only imposed penalties eight times. Critics like consumer advocate and future presidential candidate Ralph Nader said that the government put the commercial interests of the industry over safety.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

You have a situation where technological arrogance and corporate and governmental investment in the billions refuse to recognize that they have made a terrible mistake.

[Katherine Sullivan]

When we come back, the accident that nobody thought could happen happens.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

For many years, there has been a vigorous debate in this country about the safety of the nation's 72 nuclear energy power plants. That debate is likely to be intensified because of what happened early this morning at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

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[Katherine Sullivan]

On March 28, 1979, Victor Galinsky arrived at his office in Washington, D.C. he'd been appointed as a commissioner of a new independent government agency called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or the NRC. The NRC's job was to oversee the safety of the country's nuclear power reactors.

[Victor Galinsky]

I remember I came in the morning and one of the other commissioners rushed by me, said, can I use your car? And he was going off to the emergency center. I thought, why is he doing that?

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

Was an accident at the Three Mile island nuclear power plant, which is located on an island in The Susquehanna River, 10 miles from Harrisburg.

[Victor Galinsky]

And nobody seemed to know what exactly was going on.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Operators at Three Mile island had called in an emergency around 8am that morning. The plant was home to two reactors operated by a company called Metropolitan Edison. And that day, something went wrong. Galinsky wasn't getting a lot of information from the workers on site. But one thing he did know the radiation meters at one of the reactors was reading way too high.

[Victor Galinsky]

I mean, the feeling I had is things just did not sound right. And I felt it was a lot more dangerous situation than was described.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

Officials from Metropolitan Edison Co. Which operates the plant, attempted to minimize the seriousness of the accident, saying the public was never in danger. We may have some minor fuel damage, but we don't believe at this point that it's extensive.

[Victor Galinsky]

It's sort of interesting how emergencies work. You imagine everybody's running around scurrying. In reality, everything slows down.

[Katherine Sullivan]

The people living near the plant in a town near Harrisburg called Middletown, were also confused about the information they were hearing. At first they were told not to worry. It wasn't until two days after the accident, a Friday, that things became alarming. Former Middletown resident Paula Kinney was the mother of three young children at the time. She was at home when the governor made an announcement.

[Paula Kinney]

My next door neighbor, I was setting her hair in my kitchen, dining room. And governor Thornburg came on TV and he said, as a precaution, we're going to evacuate people within the five mile radius and those who have preschool children.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

I am advising those who may be particularly susceptible to the effects of any radiation, that is pregnant women and preschool age children to leave the area within a five mile radius of the three mile.

[Paula Kinney]

And that's when all hell broke loose.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

The situation here has become more and more confusing each day. Telephone lines in the Harrisburg area are jammed and immediate highways are too, as more people decide to leave. I think we're very close to a chaotic situation. Part of it, I think is a lack of credibility of what we're being told.

[Paula Kinney]

We were getting conflicting messages. If you live in a brick house, open your windows. If you live in a brick house, keep your window shut, your doors shut. I mean, it was, it was complete chaos.

[Katherine Sullivan]

She remembers lines at gas stations and traffic leading out of Middletown as the community emptied out.

[Paula Kinney]

When the children were brought home, I was so panicked inside, but I didn't want to reflect my panic to my children. So I just said, we're going to go to nana and pop pops in Wilkes Barre. We're gonna go visit them and have like a little mini vacation.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Kenny and her family drove an hour and a half away to her in law's house.

[Paula Kinney]

They had us all take our clothes and put them in plastic bags and they were disposed of. I felt like a leper. And then to turn the TV on and to see Walter Cronkite show films of our neighborhood where we raised Our children.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

But a nuclear safety group said that radiation inside the plant is at eight times the deadly level. So strong that after passing through a three foot thick concrete wall, it can be measured a mile away.

[Katherine Sullivan]

The following week was a blur of news updates, expert opinions and radiation tests. Here's what had really happened the day of the accident. At around 4 o' clock in the morning, there was a problem with the cooling system at unit 2. It caused temperatures to rise and triggered an automatic shutoff of the reactor. A valve at the top of the reactor got stuck open, letting radioactive steam escape into the containment building. Operators didn't realize the valve was open and they cut off coolant to the reactor, which led to overheating. About half of the uranium fuel inside the reactor melted. After about 10 days, the public was told the threat of radiation had passed. Paula Kinney returned home with her husband and three children. No deaths or injuries were attributed to the partial meltdown. But the experience changed a lot for her.

[Paula Kinney]

I lost so much trust in our government. I mean, it was like I couldn't believe they did this to us.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Kinney joined a growing movement protesting nuclear power.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

No more nukes. No more nukes. No more nukes.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Historian Sarah Roby says the partial meltdown at Three Mile island was a key moment for the anti nuclear movement in

[Narrator/Commentator]

the US that was scary enough to enough people that public opinion dropped off precipitously about support for nuclear power. I think lots of people understood it as a very close call, but that maybe it's not worth pursuing this anymore.

[Katherine Sullivan]

A movement that had been somewhat fragmented before 1979 began to coalesce. This was a cold war and the constant threat of nuclear weapons contributed to the fear of nuclear power. A series of no nukes rallies took place across the country.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

The first major rally after the Harrisburg accident.

[Katherine Sullivan]

And it was an accident like this one in San Francisco where Ralph Nader addressed the crowd.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

There will be other rallies all over the country as more people who never had an opinion on atomic energy join those of you who have been working to stop this technological Vietnam right here in this country.

[Katherine Sullivan]

In the decade after Three Mile Island, 67 nuclear plant projects were canceled, public opinion shifted even further against nuclear power. After the 1986 disaster at the Soviet nuclear plant Chernobyl in current day Ukraine. By mid-1986, polls showed that over 70% of Americans opposed new nuclear power plants in their communities.

[Narrator/Commentator]

In addition to this long term protest against nuclear, there was also kind of a simmering skepticism about the ability of nuclear agencies to do their job well. And to be operating in the public interest.

[Katherine Sullivan]

And to be honest, the NRC did institute sweeping new safety regulations in the 1980s, many of them overseen by Victor Golinsky. But still, for 25 years, no new plants were built in the US and over a dozen were retired. In 2019, the remaining undamaged reactor at Three Mile island was shut down. It was expensive to run and the economics weren't working out. Activists celebrated. So how did we get from there to the so called nuclear renaissance we see today? That's after the break. If there's one moment you can pinpoint when interest in nuclear power really started picking back up, it was this one. Just a few weeks before Grace Vander Hei won the Miss America Pageant in late 2022, a new online chatbot is

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

making waves on social media for both its precise and painfully honest answers.

[Katherine Sullivan]

It's called ChatGPT, which stands for ChatGPT and other AI services use huge amounts of energy and all of a sudden millions of Americans were using them regularly.

[Jennifer Hiller]

And suddenly you have had data centers and tech companies saying they need, you know, gigawatts of power.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Jennifer Hiller is an energy reporter at the Wall Street Journal. For the last five years, she's focused on nuclear power.

[Jennifer Hiller]

A gigawatt is about what a reactor produces. So to have one facility that takes an entire reactor's worth of power is just something that we hadn't seen before. So it just really turned the power industry on its head.

[Katherine Sullivan]

For context, a gigawatt is about the energy demand of San Francisco. Tech CEOs were talking about adding entire new cities worth of energy needs to the grid. Dozens of them, nuclear companies were listening, including Constellation, the company that owns the Three Mile island site. In 2023, their CEO, Joe Dominguez was at a meeting of corporate executives. He was listening to some leaders in

[Jennifer Hiller]

tech and they were talking about how much power they would need. And he was just stunned by the amount of electricity that the tech folks were talking about needing for AI and the size of data centers that they would build. And so he is sitting at this meeting and thinking they are going to need nuclear reactors to do this. And, you know, went home from this meeting and told people at Constellation to start looking at, you know, just what would it take to restart Three Mile Island.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Constellation quickly found a partner in Microsoft to help restart the plant. They had retired just five years before. Microsoft signed a 20 year deal with Constellation to buy the energy generated at the site for their AI data centers. Along with Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon have all signed deals for nuclear power. But these companies have a long road to getting nuclear electricity to their data centers. For one, it's expensive. Restarting Three Mile island, now called the Crane Clean Energy center, isn't as simple as flipping the lights back on. Constellation estimates it will cost about $1.6 billion to restart the one non damaged

[Jennifer Hiller]

reactor that is also considered kind of low hanging fruit for getting nuclear power onto the grid. This is kind of the easiest, fastest thing that you can do is just take a reactor that hasn't yet been dismantled and get it back online.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Three Mile island isn't the only plant being restarted. Google is helping fund a reopen of a plant in Iowa and another plant in Michigan is scheduled to come back online this year.

[Jennifer Hiller]

Yeah, this is a big deal. This is new in the U.S. previously, if you closed a nuclear reactor down, you know, if you're decommissioning a nuclear power plant, that's just it, kind of end of story. That plant goes away.

[Katherine Sullivan]

If 1.6 billion for Three Mile island sounds like a lot in the world of nuclear, it's a bargain. A Bill Gates backed company called TerraPower just got permitting to build an advanced type of reactor. The project is estimated to cost between 4 and 10 billion dollars. Here's Gates on CBS in 2024.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

I feel great about the support we're getting from the federal government in this nuclear space to take our history of excellence and solve the problem that our current reactors are just way too expensive.

[Katherine Sullivan]

TerraPower is among a swath of startups developing their own smaller next generation nuclear reactors. The designs use different kinds of fuel, different kinds of cooling systems and make bold promises. Some are even venturing into the world of nuclear fusion.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

I think we're going to get nuclear fusion to work in the next few years.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Here's OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman in 2023.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

And importantly, not just as a scientific demonstration, but as incredibly cheap energy and at global scale.

[Katherine Sullivan]

You might remember that people have been talking about nuclear fusion since the 1950s. The joke about nuclear fusion is that it's been about 10 or 20 years away for the past 80 years. But that hasn't dissuaded big tech. Sam Altman is invested in a fusion company, as is Bill Gates. Even the Trump family is invested in a fusion energy company. The Trump administration is trying to support all these nuclear endeavors. President Trump has set ambitious goals to build reactors as fast as possible. He aims to have several operating by this year's fourth of July.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

One of President Trump's core missions when he assumed the presidency was to unleash American energy dominance. He recognized that.

[Katherine Sullivan]

Here's the Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, explaining the president's goals earlier this year.

[Historical/Documentary Voice]

And in fact, he set out a very bold goal. This is just 12 months ago, he said. By the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, meaning July 4th of this year, we're going to have multiple nuclear reactors. Critical. People thought that was crazy.

[Katherine Sullivan]

To meet this goal, President Trump's administration is rolling back regulations to fast track these private sector nuclear projects. I asked Jennifer Hiller if she thought all of these companies would be successful.

[Jennifer Hiller]

Oh, no, I don't think so. There's definitely a huge hype cycle going on, but we do not yet know who's going to successfully deliver projects.

[Katherine Sullivan]

So far, the public is going along with this hype. 61% of Americans support nuclear power generation, according to a Gallup poll from last year. Just a decade ago, that number was only 44%. In the 1970s, a shift in public opinion helped bring the nuclear industry to a halt. This time around, the big question Will AI give nuclear staying power? Or like last time, will enthusiasm fizzle out? And that's it for this special edition of what's New Sunday for May 10th. USA 250 Nuclear Powers Reboot is produced by me, Katherine Sullivan with supervising producer Jana Herron. Additional support from Chris Zinsley, Sound design and mixing by Michael Lavalle Fact checking by Aparna Nathan. Special thanks to Anthony Bansi, Chris Maher and Adam Stein. Michael Lavalle wrote our theme music, Ayesha Al Muslim is our development producer and Chris Sinsley is our deputy editor. I'm Katherine Sullivan and we'll be back next month with the final installment of our USA 250 podcast, what's News? We'll be back with a new episode tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

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